Varsity men’s soccer dominates league

PHOTO: Juniors Holt Klineberg and Simon Vaca-Lorenzi battle for the ball during practice.

By Julia Limburg,

BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

The varsity men’s soccer team has won every game this season except for one. The team is one of the strongest Davis High has seen in many years.

Senior Kai Peris played soccer for DHS since his freshman year, and is very happy with how this year’s team is doing

“We’re doing the best we have in nearly a decade. Two or three weeks ago we beat Jesuit and we hadn’t beat them since 2014,” Peris said.

Peris has been looking forward to this year for a long time. “Alex Park, the coach, … and I have been talking since sophomore year … about this year in particular. We (plan) to go pretty far in playoffs. We (plan) to win it.”

One reason why the team is so strong this year is that many of the players have been on the same team

before. “This year, (we’re doing well) mainly because we all play on the same club (team). We know how each other plays (…and) have been playing with each other (for a while),” Peris said.

Varsity soccer player and senior, Zach Agnew, shares similar sentiments.

“We’re a group of really close friends on and off the field. When we (play) we play for each other. We’re like a group of brothers,” Agnew said.

The team also practices several days a week and does a lot of training. “We practice pretty much any day we don’t have a game. So Monday, Wednesday and Friday … We’re out there pretty much every day,” Peris said.

During practice, the team does a lot of drills and “right now we’re doing conditioning to get fit for playoffs,” Peris said.

Coach Alex Park said that they use previous games to keep getting better. “We (base) trainings off of games we (play) to improve,” Park said.

“Our coach runs us a lot, and so … being able to out run (other) teams really helps,” varsity player junior Caleb Yoon said.

“We’ve done a lot of fitness to make sure we can always play longer than the other team and we know we’re not going to tire out,” Agnew said.

The team also spends time together outside of practices and games to bond. “In pre-season we did a lot of bonding stuff, (such as going) out for lunch. We try to do things together as much as we can, especially before big games. Recently though, because of the (spike in COVID-19) we haven’t been doing much,” Peris said.

As the season comes to a close, the team is preparing for the upcoming Section playoffs, where it will most likely have a high seed.